ARGONAUTICA AND THE HEROES

The ancient Greek world was rife with heroes, those mysterious creatures thought to be somewhere between the human and the divine. The heroes accomplished great deeds in life, and after their deaths they were honored with a special subset of divine rites offered to powerful beings believed to live beneath the earth. These chthonic heroes, long after their deaths, were thought to possess such power that they could offer boons if correctly appeased with sacrifices and libations poured into the earth.

Jason was himself worshipped with the heroic rites at temples called Jasonia across the East, though later research (by J. Markwart in 1930) would show these were a Greek misunderstanding of the ayazana or ayadana sanctuaries of the Persians (*yazona in the language of the Medes, whom the Greeks thought the descendants of Medea's son), which Greek ears believed sounded like Jasonia, or temples of Jason.

Strabo, Geography 11.13...the memorials of Jason are, the Jasonian heroa, held in great reverence by the Barbarians... The story of Jason contains many heroic themes that reappear in other Greek myths and legends. The following pages explore some of the uncanny parallels between Jason and other great Heroes who undertook adventures of striking similarity.